Articles by Tito Orlandi

What is the use of reflecting on the history of Digital Archaeology? Dividing the history of Digital Humanities in general into four stages, Digital Archaeology was born in the stage of “pioneers’ applications” (1960-70), and for some time it developed both in practice and in theory. The theory seemed especially interesting also for non digital Archaeology, but around 1990 technology suffocated the more complicated and difficult theoretical approach. The opportunity to go back to this approach is demonstrated in three special cases: the creation of databases, the encoding procedures, and the relations between archaeology and information science.

Theoretical archaeology has known many important contributions in the last 20 years, both inside and outside the general archaeological handbooks. On the contrary, the methodology of computer applications has received less attention, because the formal linguistic character of computer procedures has been scarcely understood. A relevant exception is the fundamental logicist theory of J.-C. Gardin, which was conceived outside computer applications, but soon found its place in their methodology. Two recent books (with CD), publishing the results of such experiments, are discussed

The first section of this article concerns the theme of Humanities Computing teaching. Most experts agree with the opinion that Humanities Computing is an independent discipline - which studies the problems of formalisation and models, crossing all humanities disciplines (linguistic, literature, history, archaeology, history of art, history of music) - and as such it should be introduced into the Faculties of Humanities. The academic organisations are beginning to acknowledge the importance of teaching computer applications to the students, but their approach is far from consistent. The integral proposal of a new independent scientific-disciplinary sector, submitted by a group of experts to be approved by the Italian CUN (Consiglio Universitario Nazionale), is therefore presented. The second part of the article deals with the results of an enquiry, carried out in 21 Italian Universities, on how Humanities Computing is being introduced into the curricula of the Faculties of Humanities. Many relevant quantitative data are illustrated, which clearly clarify both the necessity to distinguish between the simple alphabetisation and the teaching of applications for research, as well as the urgency to solve in this sector of studies the problem of teachers on temporary contracts.

In an article published in «Archeologia e Calcolatori» 1996, A.-M. Guimier-Sorbets expressed some basic ideas on the function of multimedia in the diffusion of archaeological results, and its relation with document storage and interpretation. The present article takes over those ideas, aiming at better formalizing the essence of multimedia, and comparing that formalization with C. Renfrew’s proposals about the methods of a cognitive archaeology. Finally a survey of web pages dedicated to archaeology is presented together with critical annotations.

Formalisation of data, which is the base of encoding procedures, raises a number of problems which should not be solved, as it is usually done, through generic intuition. Starting from Gardin's discussion of the «compilations», as distinct from «explanations», and from Gordon Childe's late epistemological propositions, the formalisation is defined as the production of structures of symbols which perfectly match the archaeological evidente as the scholars sees it. This may be done by means of different types of language; using computers requires modelling techniques. They depend on our appreciation of the evidence itself, and semiotics helps us in distinguishing between material evidence and its symbolic meaning.

Encoding problems are often neglected, in archaeological as in other humanities related research, because of their apparent triviality. Encoding is assumed to be the reproduction in an “electronic alphabet” (be it the ASCII code or a second level language like SGML) of something written on paper. On the contrary, the encoding process begins with the recognition, choice and declaration of the elements of reality which we are going to submit to an electronic process. As a consequence, we must examine very carefully the substance of the logical and formal passages that we undertake. This article tries to show the difference between many kinds of encoding and the significance of encoding in archaeology, in comparison with other opinions, mainly by J.-CI. Gardin and F. Djindjian.

The trend in the use of computers in the Humanities, unlike taught or social sciences applications, seems to be the coexistence and exchange of many small or medium-size databases (both textual and “factual”) rather than larger ones, developed in big institutions. This requires two main conditions: a common operating environment and standards in the organisation and encoding of data. In archaeology, as in other disciplines, Unix offers a convenient solution for problem 1, and relational database theory for problem 2. An example is given of how a database may be organised and managed exclusively with the native tools of Unix and plain ASCII files.